


Defensive Tactics

by karanguni



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Coming of Age, M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 04:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13116411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: Aral raised an eyebrow. 'Did you come here just to insult me?''No,' Ges shook his head. His eyes were brown, which was in itself unremarkable, but there was a light in them that made Aral itch for pencil and paper. 'But it is a very effective way of breaking the ice.'





	Defensive Tactics

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yhlee (etothey)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! :D You're awesome!
> 
> A non-warning here: canon _atypical_ Ges Vorrutyer.

The gospel according to Count Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan read thusly: the best cure for the wounds left on a society scarred by war - in addition to simply being prepared for for the next one - was to ignore that any war had happened in the first place. One should do what the Vor have always done best:  _will_  a new world order into existence; confuse nurture and nature until they were indistinguishable.

And so Aral's father said to him at dinner one evening, 'You are behind by a year at this point, but semester at the Lower Academy starts in two weeks. Have your bags packed and ready to go.'

'The Academy?' Aral put down his fork; the noise of his cutlery clinking against the tableware made the Count twitch. He was across the long, formal table from his father; the expanse of space between them gaped.

Aral knew of families which laid places for lost family members at the table until the first anniversary after a death. He was not sure if his father disdained the practice because it was sentimental or because it seemed like bad luck to have the number of dead outnumber the living.

The Count  cast a dry look Aral's way. 'Was that a question or just dumb repetition, boy? Yes, the Lower Academy - you aren't going to spend the rest of your life uneducated.'

'Was a civil war not education enough?' returned Aral, aged fifteen and a veteran Ezar's war against the reign of Yuri Vorbarra.

'The war taught you  _how_  to use a knife,' the Count snorted. 'School will teach you _when_ and _where_ to.'

* * *

The Lower Academy was an institution as old as the Vor, even if its campus was not. Thrice destroyed since its establishment, it was now picking up the pieces for a fourth time under the auspices of the new Emperor, long may he live. It was an easy target, since it was nothing if not a collection of highborn Vor sons being groomed for the Imperial Academy and what other appropriate civilian pursuits lay beyond that.

Aral arrived at its doors with two trunks and as many armsmen; Count Piotr was taking no chances with the safety of his last surviving heir. The dormitory that was to be his home for the next two years was nearing the end of its reconstruction. Whoever had been commissioned to do the work had done an admirable, if pointless, job in rescuing old masonry from bombed out wreckage and reincorporating it into the new facade. If the purpose was to make the building look like it had been there since the Time of Isolation, Aral thought it well executed. He suspected the building would be just as well insulated, too - in the eyes of their fathers, nothing galvanised spoiled Vor children better than living in luxurious discomfort.

He was given a schedule, a rule book, and a room as far away from any of the others as was physically possible. Aral paid it no mind: his father had been right - the war had taught him how to use a knife, and it had simultaneously made the name  _Vorkosigan_  synonymous with the word  _kingkiller_. Aral watched the other students around him - war survivors in their own way - struggle to evaluate him: was he a future strategic ally, or a liability in the making? Most kept a cool distance.

One did not.

'Should I introduce myself?' asked the dark-haired boy who appeared at Aral's door one evening, lounging there languid and seemingly unburdened by the awkwardness of adolescence. 'Or am I supposed to do the thing where, if you can't guess from my house colours, I'm not to befriend you?'

Aral found himself genuinely smiling for the first time since his arrival. 'I can play the game if you want to,' he said, propping one arm over his chair to turn and face his visitor, looking him up and down. 'House Vorrutyer blue and grey,' Aral declared. 'The Count only has a son and a daughter, so unless you are a  _very_  well disguised gift to all the hormonal boys trapped here…' Aral's smile promoted itself to a grin. 'Ges Vorrutyer, I take it?'

'Top marks,' Ges said, inviting himself inside. Aral made no protest as Ges sprawled on his sheets and returned the treatment. Ges' eyes lingered longer than Aral had let his. 'Shit brown and old-man silver make a bad wrapping for you, Aral Vorkosigan.'

Aral raised an eyebrow. 'Did you come here just to insult me?'

'No,' Ges shook his head. His eyes were brown, which was in itself unremarkable, but there was a light in them that made Aral itch for pencil and paper. 'But it  _is_  a very effective way of breaking the ice.'

'Should I insult you back?' Aral teased.

Ges tucked both hands behind his head and crossed his legs at the ankle, unbothered that he was on someone else's bed with his boots still on. He turned a smile on Aral like it was a weapon. 'What kind of lousy friend would do that?'

Aral laughed at having walked into that verbal trap; the sound bubbled up from a glacial space deep inside of him. He had not known he was capable of that, anymore, and so Aral laughed long and Aral laughed hard and Aral looked at Ges and decided that a friend was something that even a pauper-Vor could afford to have.

* * *

It turned out that Ges was something better than a plain friend: he was a blunt one, too, unafraid to speak his mind and equally cavalier about stating political truths that most would prefer to leave assumed but unvoiced.

That was, ostensibly, why the two of them were now in detention together. A very nominal detention - they had been assigned extra work but had otherwise been given nothing more than a slap on the wrist for causing a near riot in the campus mess. Another student had suggested, loudly, that the Emperor had best watch his back lest the capital be renamed  _Vorkosigan Sultana._ Aral - who had heard nothing but more of the same for the last half-decade or so - had lost his temper at that final straw settling atop his back. Ges, for better or for worse or for his own amusement, had evened the odds by taking his side.

That the administrators had done little to punish them was the blackest of ironies: Aral had no doubt the leniency had been born out of their fear of his father.

Suspended for a day, they retreated to Ges' room in the otherwise empty dormitory to lick their wounds and make studious good on some pretense of regret. Aral sported a vicious blue bruise on his right cheekbone; Ges' left eye was only slightly better.

'So let me get this straight,' Ges said, propped up against the far wall with a neglected textbook open on his lap. 'If Ezar were to drop dead somehow, and then Serg after him, how far down the line of succession do we have to go until we hit you?'

'It will _never_  come down to me,' Aral winced. He pointed at Ges' book. 'Get your history right.'

'History says that salic descent is a perfectly just option when someone related to someone Vorbarra decides it's a just option,' said Ges. Dangerous words, because they were true; clever words because Ges had no compunctions making commentary on Dorca the Just's rise to power.

'Keep your mouth shut before you say something you regret,' Aral growled. When Ges just grinned, he leaned in from his borrowed place at Ges' desk and added, 'Or before you say something  _I_  regret.'

Ges was undeterred. 'Come off of it, Aral - you're a Vorkosigan talking to a Vorrutyer. We're both black sheep: if I were my sister, this -' he gestures to them studying together unchaperoned '- would be a scandal. They'd be pouring the groats.'

'You're a Vorrutyer first-born talking to a Vorkosigan remnant,' Aral retorted. 'There is  _already_  scandal.'

Ges moved to sit up on the bed; the room was small enough that his knees knocked against Aral's. 'Is there?' he asked, voice low.

Aral met Ges' eyes, but his mouth was dry. Ges didn't look away when he reached over; Aral braced himself, and was almost disappointed when Ges touched the desk instead of him. But then he recognised the feint for what it was - Ges was pulling over his sketchbook, too fast for Aral to snatch it back.

'I see you've been hard at work,' Ges chuckled, leafing through the pages. He was unembarrassed, Aral could tell, and unsurprised to find himself captured in several sketches. When Ges looked up, Aral was caught all over again by that light in Ges' eyes: utterly unafraid, brutally honest. 'This isn't bad, Aral. I suppose going into art is out of the question with your brother dead, but it's a bit of a waste, really.'

There were too many ways Aral could respond to that, and so he settled for the wisest one available: 'You are a piece of work, Vorrutyer, you really are.'

'I think you mean  _work of art_?' Ges asked, holding up the sketchbook as proof. But he handed it back over to Aral, and the moment would have passed if he had not done what he did next: Ges unbuttoned his shirt, and hung it over the footboard of the bed, and then - half naked - picked up his textbook again and said, 'Go on. You need practice, Vorkosigan - drawing from memory is never as good as it is from life.'

* * *

He never touched Ges while they were at the Lower Academy together. In the year and a half of schooling that Aral needed to get through before the start of his time at the Imperial Service Academy, they never quite crossed a line with each other. Ges posed; Aral drew. He filled a sketchbook with nothing but Ges: Ges sitting, Ges studying, Ges in repose.

Ges, for his part, seemed content to play the role Aral had given him. The only acknowledgement he made of the situation was to on occasion sling an arm over Aral's shoulder and point at a lowerclassman while saying things like, 'That one - too skinny? Too broad? I am trying to get a handle on your tastes, Vorkosigan.'

Aral always smiled, but also always kept his mouth shut.

* * *

A year above Ges, Aral left for the Service Academy first. There, he was glad to find a world around him that was finally in alignment with his internal reality. The military triumvirate of discipline, training, and structure formed a unimpeachable foundation on which Aral could build his life.

His relationship with the Count-his-father improved dramatically. Piotr, who could not spend twenty minutes talking with his own son about any of Aral's personal hobbies, took any interest Aral expressed in military strategy and returned it fourfold. He sent Aral arm-length letters filled with advice and recommended reading; it was as if Aral were a child finally able to speak a language his father could also understand.

His relationship with the Imperial Service's command structure also repaired itself. Finally a cadet instead of a boy, Aral was more than content to wear his new label and to look forward to ones that would become available to him as he scaled the simple ladder of military career progression. Cadet, ensign, lieutenant, commander, captain, commodore: none of those were anywhere close to  _traitor_  or - worse -  _prince_. Aral knew how to be a good soldier. He had already been a good soldier for Ezar and his father for over five years now: the trappings of uniform and rank and responsibility were his due.

An inconvenient side effect of this was that Aral found it easy to see what made good soldiering so attractive to generations of Barrayarans before him.  _Attractive_ , in his case, was more literal than metaphorical, but there was an upper limit to what Aral could do about his own predilections.

His peers did not interest Aral; they were either comrades or direct competitors. His instructors, for the most part, were better - Aral could appreciate a set of good orders as well as some of his peers could appreciate a good vintage of wine.

Still, even if propositioning an instructor were not in itself a stupendously stupid idea to begin with, it was also out of the question because Aral had a very distinct problem: he viewed  _good orders_  and  _direct orders_  as distinct entities. This caused issues with some instructors whom Aral deemed unworthy of being afforded obedience: these were often non-commissioned officers, though the occasional ranked Vor twit was not excepted. Even officers who  _did_  like Aral could not be seen condoning near insubordinate behaviour, and so they kept their distance from him the same way Aral kept his distance from them.

 _It does not matter,_  his father wrote to him irritably,  _if Captain Vorbonne is an idiot fool incapable of tying his own bootlaces. He is a captain, even if he has been a captain for fifteen years on end. You are a cadet. Obey until such a time when others have to obey you: you do no one any favours suggesting that Vorkosigans cannot follow rules._

Censured, Aral kept his head down and his grades up. They graduated him as a lieutenant at eighteen after three abysmally boring years relearning things Aral had learned long ago at his father's knee.

* * *

He did not meet Ges again until nearly a year and a half after receiving his commission. He was in fact  _assigned_  Ensign Vorrutyer, who had - like every Barrayaran serviceman - put in for ship duty and - like every Lord Vor - been given it.

'Lieutenant Vorkosigan,' Ges saluted at their re-introduction. The look in his eyes was not subordinate.

Admiral Vorhaus, who had taken time to give them both the news in person in his office, looked between them. 'You were at school together, I assume?'

'Yes sir,' Aral said, keeping his eyes on Ges.

'Good,' Vorhaus nodded. 'Then we won't have any problems getting Vorrutyer settled, will we?'

'No sir,' Ges said, the look in his eyes still unchanged.

They got out of the Admiral's greatroom. There was not much to explain to Ges - that would all come from the NCOs and from raw time spent working the decks - but there was a certain expectation that, the two of them being junior Vor officers close in age, they talk. Aral pointed out what was worth pointing out, showed Ges his assigned bunkroom, pointed out the officers' mess, then ended the tour at his own bunk. The ship was still docked and resupplying; deck discipline would not be fully enforced until closer to their departure.

Ges stepped into Aral's bunk. 'Private quarters for lieutenants,' he whistled. He turned and looked at Aral, smiling. 'More reason to make sure I'm good for the next little while.'

Aral closed the door behind him and put his back to it. He raised an eyebrow. 'Have you been misbehaving?'

Ges raised his shoulders in a shrug:  _who knows_. 'I topped my class. Not enough competition with you and that Vorhalas gone.'

'Congratulations,' Aral said, falling back into the lockstep of their conversational dance.

'And you?' Ges asked in turn, looking Aral up and down. 'Found any good soldiers, or are they all still either too skinny or too broad?'

'Ges,' Aral warned.

'What?' Ges raised his eyebrows in turn. 'Are you telling me that in the three or four years since I've last seen you that you've kept to your guns about looking but not touching?'

Aral said nothing, but his lips were a thin, bitter line.

'Aral,' Ges said. When Aral did not move, he shook his head and softened his voice. 'Aral,' said Ges again, and Aral recognised pity on Ges' face and hated it at once. But Ges was undeterred, and stepped in closer. 'Aral, you know what the problem with you is?'

'What?' Aral barked. He let Ges come to stand in front of him, neither moving in nor pulling away.

'The problem with you,' Ges went on, the toes of his boots practically touching Aral's own, 'is that when you run out of offensive manoeuvres, you stall. You always have to  _go somewhere._  Constant motion. Never mind that you don't find half the  _galaxy_  attractive enough to give them time of day - it's like you can't  _do anything_  if you can only do something halfway.'

'Always follow through,' Aral murmured. Ges was very close.

'Sometimes you can't,' Ges challenged, voice equally low. 'Sometimes the tactics just don't work. The grand strategy falls apart. The world doesn't change fast enough to keep up with you.'

Aral winced. Ges reached up and put a hand on either side of his head, boxing them up against the door. 'In some cases, there is simply no winning. What do you do then?'

'Minimise losses,' Aral said, not looking away and not letting Ges look away, either.

Ges' eyes were bright. 'Precisely. Sometimes you need a good defensive position to hold. You buy time, for as long as you can, for as long as you're given. And then you hope.'

'For what?' Aral asked. He still hadn't touched Ges, neither had Ges touched him.

'For the world to change, I suppose,' Ges said, watching him intently. 'For a grand strategy to come together, for the tactics to work.  _Then_ maybe you go and get an offensive specialist and see what one hothead can do, tilting at windmills.'

'You'll make a world-class defensive strategist one day,' Aral told him, and then leaned in at last.


End file.
